At Mad Rose Gallery, two exhibits invite a new way of seeing

Gallery director and artist Natalie Tyler
Natalia Zukerman


Gallery director and artist Natalie Tyler
Mad Rose Gallery in Millerton recently invited visitors to experience both of its current exhibits, “Ebb & Flow” and “The Female Gaze” with many of the artists in attendance.
The tour began with “Ebb & Flow,” an installation of glass works by Steven Weinberg, Lisa Sacco, Eric Hilton and Natalie Tyler. In the late-afternoon sun, the room became a kaleidoscope of bending, fracturing, flickering light. Color slid across the walls; reflections dissolved into shadow. It was a subtly instructive prelude to “The Female Gaze” next door as the glass didn’t just glow — it shifted the angle of attention, teaching the eye to notice differently.
The term “the female gaze” is attributed to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, who, in her 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” named what Hollywood had long taken for granted: the camera — and by extension, the viewer — was aligned with a masculine subjectivity. Women existed on-screen largely as objects, not agents.
In the decades since, the “female gaze” has evolved into something more expansive. It signals authorship, yes, but also empathy, subjectivity, and the refusal to flatten lived experience into familiar tropes. It is not simply the opposite of the male gaze; it is another way of seeing altogether.
Mad Rose’s eight featured photographers explore this premise across mediums, histories and sensibilities using diverse approaches to challenge conventional narratives. The response has been so positive that the exhibit has been extended through Dec. 28.

The tour began with Ava Pellor, whose large black-and-white portraits of bodies in nature rely on trust. She explained that she photographs with a tripod or a Rolleiflex so she “never breaks the connection with the subject.” The goal isn’t voyeurism, she said, but agency.
“What really shocks me is when people say, ‘I’ve never been photographed by a woman before,’ and then they thank me for letting them be who they are,” she explained. “That’s why I photograph the nude, to almost desexualize the female body, or the human body in general.”
The work explores the symbiotic, inseparable relationship between bodies and the natural world. “To live symbolically is to remember we are not apart from nature, but a continuation of it,” said Pellor.
Across from Pellor hang glossy and colorful images by internationally renowned fashion and costume designer, Han Feng. Co-founder of Mad Rose Neal Rosenthal spoke of her work saying, “I find her work exceptionally expressive and beautiful.”

Next was Jan Meissner, a writer who discovered the camera could tell stories she couldn’t write. Her early-2000s street photographs were taken in Soho. “I’ve never staged a photograph in my life,” she said. Revisiting the images now was strange, she admitted, depictions of a city that no longer exists.“I don’t think I could make these photographs anymore. The terrain has changed and I have changed. It was a moment in time, and I thank Mad Rose for sending me back there.”
An abstract photographer and longtime human rights lawyer, Pamela Takiff brings a different kind of witnessing. Her work begins with overlooked textures — broken glass, peeling paint —then pares away context so the viewer’s imagination takes over.
A Guggenheim Fellow and recent Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Barbara Bosworth’s black-and-white images were made with her 8x10 camera. “I began looking for light in the darkness,” she wrote of the work, which circles family, land, and the thin veil between presence and memory.
Artist Beatrice PediconiNatalia Zukerman
Beatrice Pediconi’s work spans drawing, photography, painting and video, all organized around her investigations of water as medium. She describes the pieces on view, created between 2009 and 2016, as explorations of “the fragility of all life, highlighting its ephemeral condition.”
Barbara Woike, who spent 33 years as a news photo editor with the Associated Press, offered both history and perspective as she guided visitors through her nearly 50-year-old portraits. “All of these photographs were shot almost 50 years ago,” she said. All pre-digital, all grounded in the subject itself. “Back in the day, photography was more about realism. Even if an abstract picture was shot, it was still shot from something very real — a leaf, a pepper, a naked body twisted so that you’d pause and ask, ‘What is this?’ before realizing it was a body.”

Woike’s career, she explained, grew from that foundation. When digital photography arrived, she witnessed its shift firsthand but stayed true to the ethos of capturing the moment. “Even though photography went digital, there was no alteration of images. I could have been fired for moving a Coca-Cola can out of a picture.”
Her work, she emphasized, has always been about the subject, not the photographer. “The work was about subject matter, not about me. Back then, people still argued whether photography was art at all. Someone might look at these pictures,” she said, gesturing to Beatrice Pediconi’s abstractions across the gallery, “and ask, ‘Is it photography?’ It’s about light, and what light can put into an image.”
Many of Woike’s subjects are no longer alive. “Some I never followed, others I knew until the day they died. That’s the power of portraiture — it lets people stay alive.”
One image holds particular weight: a portrait of Katherine “Sissy” Wells, the first trans person Woike met. When Woike posted the photograph on Facebook to mark what would have been Wells’ 108th birthday, hundreds of people responded with memories. In capturing Wells, Woike did more than preserve a face — she reframed perception, reminding viewers that the story beneath the image, like light through glass, is what makes it real.
The tour ended with Rosenthal speaking about his partner and gallery co-founder, Kerry Madigan’s work. Madigan, who has been making photographs since the 1970s, is experiencing aphasia due to cognitive impairment. Her images, preserved memories, form what Rosenthal described as “a bit of a travelogue of our experiences together traveling all over the world.”
Guests were then invited upstairs for the Mad Rose Winter Salon, featuring the work of local artists at various stages of their careers. Once again, viewers were reminded that perspective is never fixed. It shifts depending on where you stand, what you know, and who is doing the seeing.
Graham Corrigan
Jorma Taccone, left, takes part in a Q&A before a screening of "Hot Rod" at Four Brothers Drive-In in Amenia on Aug. 31, 2023.
AMENIA — Four Brothers Drive-In will host a screening of the new dark comedy Over Your Dead Body on Thursday, Aug. 6, with director Jorma Taccone on hand for a pre-screening Q&A as part of a partnership with the Boondocks Film Society.
The film stars Samara Weaving and Jason Segel as a married couple. Each is secretly plotting to kill the other. Taccone, a North Canaan resident and founding member of the comedy troupe The Lonely Island, will discuss the film before the screening.
The event marks the third time Taccone has screened one of his films at Four Brothers, following presentations of Hot Rod and MacGruber. He first discovered the drive-in while passing through Amenia and later reached out to its owners about hosting a screening.
"The Four Brothers Drive-In is a delight on every level,” said Taccone. “I had never been to a drive-in movie theater before attending the screening of Hot Rod at Four Brothers. I will forever pat myself on the back for forcing John and Boondocks Film Society to play the movie there.”
Drive-in movie theaters like Four Brothers are a return to better days when people gathered together to celebrate life, community, art, and miniature golf. I'm a big fan.”
Jeff Palfini, a Boondocks co-founder alongside Cindy Heslin, says the Drive-In has been a perfect partner. Boondocks has hosted 15 events there, by Palfini’s count.
“It’s a well-oiled machine,” Palfini said. “And our audience loves it. They’re always asking when we’re going to do another movie at the Drive-In.”
In their nine years of operation, Boondocks Film Society has become a pillar of the local film community. Screenings have moved beyond the Northwest Corner into the Hudson Valley area, and programming has expanded to include premieres and Q&As, like the Over Your Dead Body event next week in Amenia.
Palfini said the film feels particularly well-matched to its venue. It’s set in the woods and “jump scares and a drive-in go hand-in-hand.”
But it all started in North Canaan.
Palfini said the re-opening of the Colonial Theatre in 2017 inspired their first screening — a little-known '90s film starring Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway, and Jerry Lewis called Arizona Dream. “We decided early on that the way to get people out was to have the events be in a variety of places,” Palfini said. “Sometimes theatrical settings, and sometimes very non-traditional settings.”
Boondocks has emphasized that uniqueness by finding local food partners to create custom menus that referenced the films. The same goes for the playlists that welcome attendees — the music references the source material in a way that beckons audiences to a deeper understanding of the film.
Thus far, it’s been working. Palfini and his team aren’t looking to change things, despite the recent news that the Colonial Theatre is on the market. Palfini helps to manage the theater, but he says one of Boondocks strengths is their ability to be mobile. “Over the years, I think we made a smart decision in terms of the sustainability of this thing by making it a pop-up. It removes almost all of the financial pressure.”

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D.H. Callahan
Bernie Williams and his Band of Friends at Millbrook Winery in 2025.
Throughout the history of Major League Baseball, precious few greats have been considered five-tool players. New York Yankee Bernie Williams was one of them.
To be considered a five tool player, one must show exceptional proficiency in five categories: hitting for average, hitting for power, running bases, fielding and arm strength. But there’s another tool Williams possesses that didn’t make it to the back of his baseball card: his mastery of jazz guitar.
On Aug. 1 at Millbrook Winery, that elusive sixth tool will take center stage as Williams and his Band of Friends return to the Vineyard for a night of jazz, wine and possibly a baseball reference or two.
Williams is best known for his legendary career with the Yankees. During his 15 years with the Bronx Bombers, he won four World Series championships, four Gold Glove awards and one Silver Slugger award in 1998, the same year he won the American League batting title, making him the first player in history to win a Gold Glove, a batting title and a World Series in the same year. Oh yeah, he was also an MLB All-Star every year between 1997 through 2001.
But while his work on the field is well known to New Yorkers and the broader baseball world, he almost took the musical route through life.
Williams first picked up a guitar when he was just 8 years old and was immediately taken by the magic of music. He was so passionate about it that he attended a performing arts high school in his hometown of San Juan, Puerto Rico. By the time he made it to the big leagues, he was known as the guy with the guitar in the locker room.
That reputation soon reached the Yankees’ fan base, with commentators telling stories of Williams and his outfield teammate Paul O’Neill’s jam sessions. O’Neill set up a drum kit in a paint room at the old Yankee Stadium, and the two would play together through rain delays, sometimes getting visits from New York City’s musical greats while they waited to play ball. MSG Network, which aired Yankees games at the time, even ran a promotional ad featuring the two World Series champions jamming together on a blues riff in their batting practice uniforms.
But unlike O’Neill, whose drumming is a hobby at best, Williams is a serious musician. During an appearance with Paul Simon at a charity event, Simon surprised Williams and his band by playing “Mrs. Robinson,” a song they didn’t know and hadn’t practiced. But just a few lines in, Williams was taking solos and riffing on Simon’s choruses with expert musicianship.
While Williams’ music is the main draw for the event on Saturday, the relationship between the All-Star and the winery goes beyond the performance. The collaboration started in 2021, when Williams visited the vineyards and instantly connected with then-general manager Ian Bearup, bonding over baseball, music and wine. They quickly decided to team up and create a custom variety they call Bernie’s Blend. This year’s bottle, featuring art from Williams’ daughter, Beatriz, is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc and will be released at the performance on Saturday night.
While the VIP ticket levels are all sold out, as of press time, bring-your-own-lawn chair spots are still available. The wine will be available at the vineyard and online throughout the year at millbrookwine.com.
Elena Spellman
If horses could speak, Hearn believes they would offer just one piece of advice: “They’d tell us to slow down.”
From feeding retired racehorses before sunrise to guiding veterans, grieving parents and troubled teenagers through equine-assisted therapy sessions, Deanna Hearn rarely has a quiet day. As founder of Lucky Orphans Horse Rescue in Dover Plains, she oversees the care of more than 40 sanctuary horses while leading a nonprofit whose mission extends far beyond animal rescue.
What began as a childhood love of horses has evolved into a place where healing runs in both directions — for horses and for people. By the time you leave Lucky Orphans, it becomes clear that this place isn’t really about horses. The horses are simply how it begins. For Hearn, every rescued horse represents something much larger: hope, resilience, healing and second chances. The organization’s mission, she says, is simple: “People helping horses heal people.”
Growing up in the Bronx, Hearn was captivated whenever she saw horses. Her grandfather, a Korean War veteran, had cared for military horses during the war. After returning home, he struggled with addiction, and the invisible wounds of military service. Through every difficult chapter of his life, however, one thing consistently brought him peace.
“Horses bring peace,” he told his granddaughter.
When Hearn was 11, after years apart, Hearn and her grandfather began spending weekends riding together. Less than a year later, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he asked family members to help buy Hearn’s first horse — a stubborn paint horse that bit, kicked and frequently threw her off. She wanted to sell him. Her father refused.
“Every life has value,” he told her.
Looking back, Hearn says that lesson became the foundation of everything she would later build.
What began as a boarding stable in 2003 took a different direction after the Dutchess County SPCA asked Hearn to care for horses seized in cruelty cases. She soon realized that although Dutchess County had one of New York’s largest horse populations, there was no dedicated nonprofit equipped to care for neglected and abused horses. Lucky Orphans officially became a nonprofit in 2008.

Today, Hearn is quick to point out that Lucky Orphans is not simply a rescue.
“We’re a sanctuary,” she said.
Many of the more than 40 horses living there arrive with broken bones, chronic illnesses, heart conditions, missing eyes or other injuries that make them unsuitable for riding or adoption. Rather than rehabilitating and rehoming them, Lucky Orphans makes a lifetime commitment to every horse.
In 2013, Hearn became certified in equine-assisted psychotherapy, combining her lifelong relationship with horses and the lessons she learned from her grandfather to create programs for veterans, trauma survivors, children and families facing emotional challenges. The transformations she witnesses continue to surprise her. She recalls one woman who arrived convinced she would not fit in with a group of strangers. During the session, a horse quietly chose to follow her without a rope or commands. For the first time in years, the woman said she felt truly seen.
Another memory has stayed with Hearn ever since. A teenager in a juvenile probation program, wearing an ankle monitor and struggling with anger, entered a round pen with a horse. As his frustration grew, the horse moved farther away. When he finally calmed himself, the horse walked directly toward him and rested its head against his chest.
“I told him, ‘If you can control your energy, you can control the world around you,’” Hearn said.
Stories like these sustain her through the difficult realities of running a nonprofit. Operating the sanctuary costs roughly $52,000 each month, and Hearn lives on the property, where the work never truly ends. Veterinary bills, staffing, fundraising and the daily care of dozens of horses are constant concerns. Then someone returns years later and tells her that the horses changed their child’s life.
“That’s why I keep going,” she said.
Looking ahead, Hearn hopes more people discover what makes Lucky Orphans unique. The organization is expanding its community programming with educational visits, yoga sessions, horse encounters, volunteer opportunities and family events designed to reconnect people with horses and with one another.
Her vision is simple: to create a place where people slow down, reconnect and remember something modern life often makes us forget. If horses could speak, Hearn believes they would offer just one piece of advice.
“They’d tell us to slow down,” she said.
After spending an afternoon at Lucky Orphans, it’s hard to disagree.
For more information or to plan a visit, go to luckyorphans.org
Jennifer Almquist
A brass quintet at the Yale Music Shed at Weekend in Norfolk 2025.
Norfolk bursts with activity in midsummer with Weekend in Norfolk (WIN). An all-volunteer committee transforms the town with free public events for all ages. WIN 2026 begins Thursday, July 30, and runs through Sunday, Aug. 2.
Norfolk sculptor Jon Riedeman, the new head of Norfolk Artists and Friends (NAF), organized the group’s 19th annual art exhibition, featuring paintings, sculpture, photography and jewelry by area artists in the Art Barn on the grounds of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Riedeman expanded the show this year by inviting artists from New Marlborough, Massachusetts, to participate. The exhibit opens with a reception Thursday, July 30, from 5 to 7 p.m.
Music fills the air throughout the weekend. On Thursday night, take in the Emerging Artists Series concert from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Music Shed, featuring the next generation of professional chamber musicians presented by the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Then enjoy Friday Night on the Green, a welcoming party with live performances and free food.
The Bistro at Infinity Music Hall is extending its hours from noon to 9 p.m. throughout Weekend, with live music during the day. Don’t miss the Yale Brass Quintet performing in front of the historic 1833 Opera House. In addition, Norbrook Brewery will host a tap takeover featuring its celebrated local brews.
The Sidewalk Sunday Street Fair fills Station Place and Robertson Plaza with local artists, authors and craftspeople selling directly to visitors. Open Studios invites the public into working galleries and private studios for live demonstrations and artist meet-and-greets. Food trucks will also be available at the street fair.
Guided and self-guided tours showcase Norfolk’s historic estates and Victorian homes, while Tiffany stained-glass tours let visitors view Louis Comfort Tiffany windows in local chapels. The Village Green hosts public weddings and vow renewals as part of the festival.
Choose from five garden tours offered Sunday, Aug. 2, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Outdoors, guided nature walks explore Barbour Woods, with birding treks for wildlife lovers. Great Mountain Forest opens its 90-year-old weather station to the public, and workshops cover fly-fishing and pollinator gardening.
Food traditions include a Blueberry Betty social and an old-fashioned ice cream social. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the IceBox Cafe is offering 50 cents off its signature freshly brewed iced chai. On Saturday, the cafe will serve buttermilk pancakes all day, complete with Great Mountain Forest syrup.
Kids’ programming features movie screenings, yoga on the grass and art workshops.
Visitors can begin their adventure at The Hub, 2 Station Place, where volunteer “WINbassadors” will hand out maps and schedules. Full event details and ticket information are available at weekendinnorfolk.org.

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